A week ago I was in a Canadian Tire store (A hardware, misc shit store), there was a cake mixer for $500 and a portable DVD player for $70.

They both sound overpriced. This probably says more about that store than about the value of these products.[edit]This is not my day, I thought you said portable CD player, not portable DVD player.[/edit]

One thing I was wondering, and I may be paranoid here, is if this might result in a small influx of immature kids joining the forums. OMG KEWL GAEMS! THNX SKREWATAK 4 HTE LINK! Like I said, I may be paranoid.

There are games that are unique for their gameplay and games that are unique for their graphical style, sound and thematic.

Kirby's Epic Yarn for instance has a very unique art-style but does nothing really new.. Tim Schafer games (like someone mention, Brutal Legend) usually have a very unique setting and art-style (Psychonauts and Grim Fandango).

So, let me use this thread to ask you guys: which kind of "uniqueness" is more important for you?

To me unique gameplay mechanics and design elements are more interesting. Anybody can clone the gameplay from another game and give it a different graphics style or have it take place in a different setting. I'm more interested in the games that have something about them that has never been (or at least rarely been) copied.

I considered having "Rocket Robot on Wheels" in the list, but then wondered if it really was unique or if it was just a really good 3D platforming game. I decided to leave it off the list.

It is easy to find lists of good games or popular games, but I would like to know more about unique games. These are games that are different from most other games in some way. Please note that these games do not actually have to be any good, just unique.

Thanks Ashkin. I think I like the second one the most. It's both fun and dangerous looking. The first, I think, might be a little too bland.

The last one actually kind of gives me the creeps ... which might actually make an interesting style for a game. Consider a first person adventure with an unsettling character guiding you through a twisted story full of moral paradoxes.

I got TEH OOZE. And since this is an authentic remake, expect a crash bug on the ending of level 2.

When I was working on Ooze I was going to have the story be about the evil Active Enterprises Corporation promising to award the hero $104,000 to take on this mission that proves to be impossible. Unfortunately I had to call it quits before I even had a story system implemented.

* Firstly, could you please add the missing tile patterns invoked by this WIP draft level I made: http://i.imgur.com/UKaeP.png* Secondly, a new enemy - one that is stationary but fires a projectile horizontally whenever the player enters its field of view.* Thirdly, this game could do with a larger field of view - I'd like to be able to see about 1.5 times as much terrain in-game.* Fourthly, variable-height jumps! Hold down the button to jump higher or release early to jump lower.* Fifthly, auto-fire - hold down C to fire continually at just below the maximum firing rate.* Sixthly, could you disable the mouse-interfering part of the engine? Since this isn't an FPS it doesn't need to restrict the mouse's movement to within the window.

1. I could build those tiles graphics. It may take a little time to put them together. In the mean while some of the current limitations are: The green ground currently only has vertical lines -- think slime dripping straight down from the surface. The bubble tiles are a little problematic and can only successfully be placed directly next to other bubbles. Acid pools currently only have squared off bottoms and must have at least one tile space between the top of the acid and the top of the lip of the pit the acid is in. Acid must currently be completely surrounded by either brown rock or green rock. I'm going to try to find ways of making it easier to design levels, such as creating simple tools.2. The game needs a lot of enemy types added. I was going to revise the entity code a little, so it may be a few days before I start adding in a lot of other enemies. Currently I have a mesh for a flying bee enemy based on the Genesis A52 Ooze that needs to be rigged, animated, and coded. I was also planning on adding an option for spitting blobs, such as in the NES A52.3. I can easily move the camera out a little.4. I considered this before and it shouldn't be too difficult to add.5. I can consider trying to implement auto-firing.6. I did not want the mouse cursor to be constrained to the window but that's the default behaviour for the input library I'm using. I'll need to figure out what needs to be done to fix this. Also the second cursor is an artefact from when I was playing around with a GUI library. I'm going to try to fix these.7. One thing I forgot to mention is that the "Enter" key reloads the current level -- which should make it easier to test revisions.

Cool, L and Podunkian. Firstly, for the music I was thinking it shouldn't stray too far from the original. I still have some kinks to work out in getting audio in the game engine, but it shouldn't be too difficult. As far as "professional grade," I'm sure it's far from it! I took a few shortcuts that might limit the engines potential a little, but the end results should still be pretty good.

Secondly, a small description of level designing. If you want to play around with adding levels it's pretty easy. The game starts at "start_lvl.txt". Through door entities you can link to other levels by specifying a destination (the file to go to next) and a dest_point (a named point in that file where the player will be placed.) To add a new level simply create a text file describing it then create a door going to it in an earlier level.

Each line of the level description files handles one aspect of the level. It follows the format of "type:arguments", where values are a list of variables and their assigned values. It may seem strange that the arguments are pipe separated, but I did this because it's a character that will never be used in in-game text (such as on signs or during dialog.) All lines must be all the way to the left.

Following is a description of what can currently be created in the level and what their properties are:

Code:

# comments begin with the # symbol and are ignored# properties can be listed in any order# coordinates have 0,0 at lower left hand side of the screen. up and right are positive values, tiles are 1 square unit big

skybox - The background material used for the far distance name - name of the sky box background [sky_day, sky_night]

Example: skybox:name=sky_day

fog - Fog affecting the appearance of objects as they go farther back from the camera type - how the fog is calculated [linear] (later I might add some other fog types) r - red color component for the fog [floating point number, i.e. 0.0] g - green color component for the fog [floating point number, i.e. 1.0] b - blue color component for the fog [floating point number, i.e. 0.5] density - thinkness of the fog [floating point number] (I don't think this is used by linear fog) start - the starting distance from camera for applying fog [floating point number] end - the ending distance from camera for fog [floating point number]

tilemap - The tilemap data for describing the terrain tiles - a file describing how the graphics and interactions of tiles [tiles.txt] map - the tile map data filename [string]

Example: tilemap:tiles=tiles.txt|map=start_map.txt

camera - The starting position for the camera (I might change this to use named points) x - x position for camera [floating point number] y - y position for camera [floating point number] minx - minimum x position the camera can move [floating point number] miny - minimum y position the camera can move [floating point number] maxx - maximum x position the camera can move [floating point number] maxy - maximum y position the camera can move [floating point number]

Example: camera:x=7|y=10|minx=10|miny=8|maxx=118|maxy=56

point - a named point in the level -- currently used by door for where the player should be placed name - the name you want to give this point [string] x - x value for point [float] y - y value for point [float]

Example: point:name=start|x=5|y=10

static - non-interactive static geometry decorations name - filename of the mesh to use [bg_hills.mesh and anything else in ./media/mesh] x - x position of mesh [float] y - y position of mesh [float] z - z position of mesh [float]

Example: static:name=terrain_plane.mesh|x=-50|y=0|z=-90

entity - an interactive object in the scene type - the type of entity that should be placed down [pickle, acid, door, spawner] x - x position for the entity [float] y - y position for the entity [float] vx - x component of velocity vector (may not be used by everything) [float] vy - y component of velocity vector (may not be used by everything) [float] [arguments] - the arguments depend on the type of entity

entity:type=pickle - the green blob that moves back and forth only uses basic entity arguments

Example: entity:type=pickle|x=10|y=10|vx=1.0

entity:type=door - an exit door leading to another level destination - the filename for where they player will go [string] dest_point - the destination point for where they player should be placed [string]

entity:type=acid - a single drip of acid that disappears when it hits something only uses basic entity arguments

Example: entity:type=acid|x=16|y=10|vx=3.0

entity:type=spawner - creates new entities at regular intervals spawn_entity - name of entity to spawn [names of above mentioned entities] spawn_freq - frequency of spawning in seconds [float] spawn_sync - time before spawning begins (used to time spawning patterns) [float] spawn_x - x position of spawning sensor (used so entities are only spawned when player is near) [float] spawn_y - y position of spawning sensor (used so entities are only spawned when player is near) [float] spawn_w - the half-width of a bounding box used by sensor (distance from player before spawning) [float] spawn_h - the half-height of a bounding box used by sensor (distance from player before spawning) [float] [arguments] - all arguments are passed to the spawned entity, so set values for the entity here

Progress on Ooze has been going very, very slowly. Making a game entirely on one's own is a difficult challenge. If I could focus on programming, art, and animation with someone else taking over level design, story, and music it would make things a lot easier. Those are the areas of expertise I am least confident of taking on.

In many ways designing levels isn't too difficult with the engine I have. Basically it involves drawing the level in a paint program, using a Python script to convert it into tilemap data, then writing a level description text file to use the tilemap, set settings, and populate the area with objects. It's pretty easy. I've never really been all too good at making a game feel fun to play and that's largely due to poor level design.

If anyone did want to try to make some levels for this game I can try to provide a Windows build with a small tutorial explaining what I've got. I would also like this person to help by giving me good suggestions on what features to add to the game's engine -- such as enemy types, etc.

I think if someone did take on these tasks this game can start gaining momentum again and become more likely to actually be completed. Just tell me if any of you think you might be able to design some cool and fun levels.

Writing and music composition would be good also, but those are not too urgent yet (since, currently, the game engine only has rudimentary support for music and dialog -- at the moment just initializing and linking the needed libraries.)

If you're interested in seeing what might be involved in creating a level check start_lvl.txt in the ./media/level folder. The script to convert images to a tilemap is in ./proj -- requires Python and PIL. Converter Use: python lvl_converter.py img_lvl.png. See sample png file for colors. Some patterns do not have tiles associated with them. An error image will be produced with these tiles marked in red and they will be invisible in game. False error pixels will be produced around bubble tiles, just ignore them. I know this is not the best setup for creating levels, but when I started I thought this project would not take as long as it had so I took some shortcuts. A proper scripting language would probably be better than the level description text files I'm using, but ... oh well.

I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. I lost a lot of interest in working on Ooze and development has practically come to a standstill. Too much needs to be done to realistically be able to finish in a reasonable amount of time and I would like to take a break from it for a while. On the other hand, what I have is fairly decent and I would rather not have this work go to waste. If I had the option of being able to shelf it for a couple of months then go back to it later I'd choose to do that, but that doesn't seem to be in line with the spirit of this group project.

A lot of people seem to be dropping out late in development. Even though I am far over the deadline and still have A LOT left to do I figured I will still keep working on Ooze a little bit each day. There are currently five games free, so I would not really be stealing anyone else's opportunity to work on something. If people keep quitting this project will never be completed. I say forget the deadline, do whatever needs to be done, and keep working on it a little at a time. But that's just my opinion.

I've been out of town for several days and unable to even use a computer for anything during that time. I really need to get a move on and push forwards to completing this game. Everybody else's work is looking really great so far.

With all this talk about the two week time limit and deadlines long past I'm beginning to wonder if I should give up Ooze for someone else to do. My mistake was choosing C++ and 3D -- both rather time consuming decisions. The project is going really well without any real problems, but because of the desired scope of the game I am probably two or three weeks away from finishing it.

I will continue working on this game, but I would rather not have to feel pressured into rushing to finish it. I wanted this to simply be a fun and enjoyable little project to work on in my free time, but with so many people complaining that enjoyment seems to be fading a little more each day. Why should I care that I missed some arbitrary deadline?

Also, if Podunkian wanted to limit this to "experienced developers" maybe he should have contacted specific game developers who he deems to be "experienced" instead of making it open to the general public by allowing anyone the freedom to sign up.

I hope this post doesn't have too negative sounding of a tone. A collection of Action 52 remake games is a pretty fun idea, but there is a lot of complaining going on around here.